Lord Derby’s successor was Lord Salisbury. His first act was to issue a Circular to the Powers, which was a furious and unrestrained condemnation of every line of the Treaty of San Stefano. If it were to be taken seriously it meant the condemnation even of the proposals of the Constantinople Conference, to which he was himself a party. Prince Gortschakoff, however, did not take it seriously. He replied to it with polite irony in his Circular of the 9th of April, pointing out that the difficulty Lord Salisbury put him in was that he confined himself to saying what England did not want. The situation, however, could not be understood by the Powers till Lord Salisbury stated plainly what she did want. The only logical answer which Lord Salisbury in terms of his Circular could give was, “The restoration of the status quo in Turkey.” Hence it is needless to say that he did not find it convenient to issue a direct reply to Prince Gortschakoff’s cynical despatch.
The Resolution calling out the Reserves was carried in the House of Commons by 319 against 64, the Liberal leaders, with the exception of Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Bright, refusing to take part in the division. That fewer than half the House supported the Government was bitterly bewailed by the War Party, but was taken by the country as a good omen of peace. So was the proposal to adjourn Parliament for a holiday of three weeks at Easter, though, when the order summoning the Indian troops to Malta was issued immediately after the adjournment, war alarms again vexed the nation. Peace meetings were once more held, and the provinces grew so restive that in the end of April Mr. Hardy and Mr. Cross, speaking at Bradford and Preston, tried to soothe public opinion by the most pacific assurances. When Parliament met after the Recess the Government were taken to task because, in sending for the Indian troops, they seemed to be endeavouring to nullify Parliamentary control over the Army. Though the Opposition were beaten in the division in the House of Commons, independent Conservatives did not conceal the suspicions and the dislike with which they regarded a proceeding which appeared more in harmony with the policy of Rome in her decay, than of the British Empire in the full vigour of virility. Though the War Party were more noisy than ever in London, there grew up a strong feeling towards the end of May that the Congress would meet after all, and that the risk of war was over. Intimidated by the Peace demonstrations, the feeble vote of support on the motion for calling out the Reserves, and the suspicions with which many Conservatives viewed the employment of Asiatic troops to fight the battles of England in Europe, the Government adopted Lord Derby’s plan, and entered into a secret agreement with Russia as to what was to be conceded in Congress. After that agreement it mattered little on what terms the two Powers met. The compromise between Lord Salisbury and Count Schouvaloff pushed back the Bulgaria of the San Stefano Treaty from the Ægean Sea to the limit fixed by the Constantinople Conference, cutting it off from all possible contact with England, an arrangement not altogether disadvantageous to Russia. It divided Bulgaria into two provinces—one to be free, but tributary to Turkey, and the other to have an autonomous government, under a Christian Pasha, appointed by the Porte with the sanction of the Powers. This weakened Bulgaria so as to give Russia a dominant influence in both provinces, which was not shaken till 1885, when their aspirations for union were realised by a Revolution, which it was Lord Salisbury’s fate to sanction, perhaps, indeed, in some measure to encourage. Greek populations were excluded from the new Bulgarias, greatly to the satisfaction of Mr. Gladstone and Lord Derby. Bayazid was restored to Turkey, but Batoum and Kars were to be taken by Russia, who thus had the Asiatic frontier of Turkey at her mercy. Russia was to take Bessarabia, and Turkey to cede Kolour to Persia—obviously to earn Persian gratitude for Russia. Subject to this compromise Lord Beaconsfield agreed not to make a casus belli of any Article in the Treaty of San Stefano, each one of which had been so fiercely condemned by Lord Salisbury’s Circular of the 1st of April.
The intention of the Government was to keep the Salisbury-Schouvaloff compromise secret. The people were to be left to imagine that Ministers had won a diplomatic victory by forcing Russia into the Congress fettered, whilst England entered it free. All the points agreed on privately were to be fought over publicly by the representatives of England in the Congress as if no such agreement were in existence, and Englishmen were to be deluded into the idea that their diplomatic agents had, by superhuman efforts at Berlin, not by private huckstering in London, obtained enormous concessions from Russia. But when the Globe newspaper astonished the world by divulging the secret agreement, the people—more especially the enthusiastic Tories—refused to be
PRINCE BISMARCK.
(From the Photograph by Loescher and Petsch, Berlin.)
deluded. What, they asked, had Ministers made such a fuss about? Why had they passed war votes, brought Indian troops to Malta at the risk of violating the Constitution, and kept Europe in a fever of unrest, if they were prepared to accept a compromise with Russia, so fatal to the Turk as this? In fact, public opinion was so much excited that Lord Salisbury, on the 3rd of June, had the courage to deny that the secret compromise published by the Globe on the 31st of May was “authentic.” Ministerial organs, also tried to convince the world that it was a forgery which had been treacherously uttered from the Russian. Embassy.[131] For a time this denial lulled all popular suspicions. By way of enforcing it Sir Stafford Northcote, when pressed, on the 6th of June, as to what policy Ministers would pursue in Congress, referred the House of Commons to the drastic Circular of the 1st of April, which tore every Article in the Treaty of San Stefano to pieces. As a matter of fact that Circular became a bit of waste-paper when Lord Salisbury signed his secret agreement with Russia, the existence of which the Government were now denying.
Three days after this compromise was arrived at, Germany, on the 3rd of June, issued invitations to the Powers to meet in Congress at Berlin on the 14th.[132] Lord Beaconsfield and Lord Salisbury then proceeded to represent England at the conclave in the Radziwill Palace. Few will forget the almost breathless excitement with which the people of England watched what they believed would be a terrible diplomatic duel for the honour of their Queen and country between Lord Beaconsfield and Prince Gortschakoff, for all this time the country had accepted as true Lord Salisbury’s denial of his secret compact with Count Schouvaloff.[133] But the tension of public feeling suddenly relaxed in the reaction of a ludicrous anti-climax. On the day after the Congress met (14th June) the Globe published the full text of the Secret Agreement. In vain did Sir Stafford Northcote and the Duke of Richmond repeat Lord Salisbury’s equivocal denials of its authenticity. Lord Grey indignantly condemned the Government for their misleading disclaimers. Lord Houghton, a Liberal supporter of Lord Beaconsfield’s foreign policy, said “the effect of the document on the whole of Europe had been portentous,” and had lowered the dignity of the Government.[134] The theory of the Ministerial Press, that the document came from the Russian Embassy was refuted in a few days by the Ministry. They raised criminal proceedings against Mr. Charles Marvin, a writer in the Foreign Office, for surreptitiously copying the paper and sending it to the Globe.[135] The prevarication of Ministers and the revelations attendant on the disclosure of the Secret Agreement shocked the confidence of the nation in the Cabinet. Lord Salisbury and his colleagues earned for themselves at this time an evil reputation for mendacity, which did much to bring about the defeat of Lord Beaconsfield’s Administration at the General Election of 1880. And yet it was difficult for them to be quite candid with Parliament in the circumstances. On the day after they had signed the Secret Agreement with Russia (which, it must be kept in view, bound her to encroach no further on Turkey in Asia) they began to negotiate a Convention with the Porte by which England promised to defend the Asiatic frontier of Turkey, on condition that the Sultan would reform the Government of Asia Minor, and permit the British Government to hold Cyprus as long as Russia kept Kars. It would have been inconvenient to divulge this scheme before Congress had decided the fate of Bulgaria. Hence Lord Salisbury was really within the mark in saying that the Secret Agreement with Russia did not “wholly” represent the Government policy. On the 8th of July it was announced that the Anglo-Turkish Convention had been signed on the 4th of June—most reluctantly, as it seemed, by Turkey. Her hesitancy, indeed, was not overcome till Lord Salisbury in the Congress abandoned, and Lord Beaconsfield actively opposed, the cause of the Greeks, whom they had buoyed up with delusive hopes. In an instant the scandal of the Secret Agreement was forgotten. The wildest tales of the wealth that was to be exploited in Cyprus flew from mouth to mouth. Englishmen saw with prophetic eye, “in a fine frenzy rolling,” Asia Minor “opened up,” under a British Protectorate, by the British prospector and pioneer. Indeed, it was not till the 9th of November, when the nauseous wines of Cyprus (of which such glowing accounts had been published) were served at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet, that the truth dawned on the City. Then it was recognised that the country had been deceived as to the teeming riches of its new possessions and positions in the East. Cool-headed men did not, however, at the outset conceal their opinion that the privilege of occupying Cyprus and of defending the Asiatic frontier of Turkey was a poor substitute for the occupation of Egypt as a means of restoring British influence in the East and safeguarding British communications with India. Mr. Gladstone and Lord Hartington both denounced the Anglo-Turkish Convention, as an “insane covenant,” and the Opposition attacked it savagely in Parliament, but without success. Independent Members attributed less importance to the arrangement than Mr. Gladstone. They argued that, as the introduction of reforms into Asia Minor was the condition precedent of defending the frontier by arms, the Treaty, so far as England was concerned, would remain a dead-letter. Great commercial interests, if created in Asia Minor by English adventurers, might doubtless need defence. But, on the other hand, it was impossible to create those interests so long as Asia Minor was desolated by misgovernment, which the Sultan had not the power, even if he had the will, to reform. Lord Beaconsfield and Lord Salisbury returned to London on the 15th of July, bringing with them, as they said, “Peace with Honour.” Applauding crowds welcomed them with passionate enthusiasm. The Tories were delighted with the Anglo-Turkish Convention, for as yet the gilt had not been rubbed off their Cyprian toy. The Liberals, though indignant at the betrayal of Greece, were pleased that Lord Beaconsfield had come out of the Congress without involving England in war. They could say very little against a Treaty the net result of which was to free eleven millions of Christian Slavs from the direct rule of the Sultan, to render even divided Bulgaria practically autonomous, and to create Servia and Roumania into independent Kingdoms. On the 18th of July Lord Beaconsfield gave the House of Lords an apologetic explanation of the Treaty of Berlin, which was only the Treaty of San Stefano modified by the Salisbury-Schouvaloff Agreement, and by the concession to Austria of the right to occupy Bosnia and Herzegovina. The debate raised no point of interest, save Lord Derby’s disclosure of the Ministerial decision in May, to send a naval Expedition to Syria, a project which was abandoned when he quitted the Cabinet. Lord Salisbury created a scene by comparing Lord Derby’s revelations to those of Titus Oates, and he gave them a flat denial. But Lord Derby had spoken from a Memorandum which he had made of the decision to which he referred at the time it was arrived at. As Lord Salisbury’s reputation for veracity had been sadly shaken by his statements about his Secret Agreement with Russia, the country paid little heed to his disclaimers, and Lord Derby’s version of the facts has ever since been taken as correct.
Triumphant majorities endorsed the policy which had been adopted in the Congress, and at the end of the year Ministers went about predicting for the country halcyon days of peace. Domestic affairs gave them little trouble. Irish obstruction was bought off by the Irish Intermediate Education Bill, which appropriated £1,000,000 to encourage secondary schools in Ireland, by prizes, exhibitions, and capitation grants. An attempt was made to pass a Bill, which, under the pretext of excluding diseased cattle from English ports, might have been so applied as to shut out foreign competition in the cattle trade. But when it was discovered that the effect of the measure would be to raise meat to eighteen-pence and two shillings a pound, the Tory borough members threatened to revolt, and after a long and obstructive struggle in Committee concessions were extorted from the Government which satisfied the Opposition. The Government and the Opposition agreed to pass a Bill consolidating forty-five Factory and Workshop Acts—a most useful measure which removed many legal ambiguities. But no other Bills of importance were carried, and no debates of much consequence raised, save on foreign questions.